Many enterprises and business situations leverage Microsoft
Word documents in standardized formats, with variations in content in subsequent
versions. Think of contracts or other legal documents, status reports, test
results, lists of rules, and many others. These documents may even be generated
through automated processes. Manually identifying and reporting changes between
versions would be a cumbersome process. Altova DiffDog Server provides an efficient,
automated solution.

DiffDog Server brings the file and directory comparison
power of Altova DiffDog to high-performance servers, making it easy to automate Word
document comparison and generate diff reports comparing files,
directories, or URLs, and even Word documents (.docx) saved in MS Office
versions 2007 or later.

MobileTogether Server, the backend hub for apps built in MobileTogether Designer, now supports the ability obtain SSL certificates using Let’s Encrypt. Let’s Encrypt is a free service aimed at encrypting all HTTP traffic on the web. This feature is supported in MobileTogether Server starting with version 5.1 and adds to the ability to upload your own certificate.

The video tutorial above walks you through configuring MobileTogether Server to utilize SSL encryption when communicating with MobileTogether clients. It covers the use of both Let’s Encrypt and certificates generated using a trusted certificate authority.

SSL certificates generated using a trusted certificate authority can be uploaded directly to MobileTogether Server. This configuration can provide several advantages to system administrators. These types of certificates are typically good for a much longer period of time, requiring fewer maintenance windows. In addition, you can keep your MobileTogether Server completely isolated from the outside world as this method does not require any external ports to be opened. The process to obtain these certificates can be much more complex and expensive. Verification typically requires you to provide information to the issuer and wait for a response which can delay your implementation.

Let’s Encrypt integration was added in MobileTogether 5.1. Let’s Encrypt is a certificate authority whose goal is to provide encryption to the entire Internet. Certificates generated are free of charge. Unlike other methods of generation, though, Let’s Encrypt certificates are only good for 90 days. MobileTogether Server is capable of automatically renewing these certificates every 60 days, but requires a scheduled server reboot each time this action occurs. Lastly, Let’s Encrypt requires your server to be accessible from the outside world; they will need to communicate with MobileTogether Server on port 80 to verify your server’s identity.

The ability to encrypt communication between client and server is becoming ubiquitous. MobileTogether allows you to easily secure all communication to your mobile clients using SSL encryption and new support for Let’s Encrypt greatly reduces the set up complexity.

I was recently talking with one of our Support Engineers about common questions he receives from customers. One that comes up a lot is schema generation, specifically, “How can I generate an XSD?” The answer, of course, is to use your favorite XML editor. XMLSpy will generate a valid XSD from a DTD, a relational database structure, a JSON Schema, and of course, an XML instance.

But what many customers don’t know is that the XML editor will also create an XML Schema based on a group of related XML files – and this is a common requirement. Let’s take a look at how it works.

Configuring MobileTogether Server to work properly on your network will require some changes to be made. MobileTogether Server is designed to sit within your network’s DMZ and enabling it to accept connections from clients both inside and outside your network will require your network administrator to open a collection of ports.

This video tutorial will walk you through the ports required to make MobileTogether function. It provides you with a baseline setup that will work inside most corporate networks. Please note, however, that every network is different and some configuration changes may be required. To support this, every port MobileTogether Server uses can be customized; all the ports listed in this tutorial are default and can be changed.

Clients will need to be able to connect both internally and externally. We recommend using the default MobileTogether ports, and remapping them to 80 and 443 at each of your firewalls. This is discussed in greater detail in the video.

Finally, a set of ports will need to be opened for administrator purposes. These ports should be limited to your internal network only.

The shortage of software developers in recent years is hardly news – and it’s not getting any better. A recent study arrived at a stunning revelation: software developers are now more valuable to companies than money.

Let’s take a look at some of the factors contributing to the problem – as well as how the emergence of low code tools is helping to solve it in a few surprising ways.